


Seeing Red

by EpicNerd



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Blood, Blood and Injury, Character Death, Dark, Darker than Noir, Dead Alya Césaire, Dead Chloé Bourgeois, Dead Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth, Dead Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Dead Nathalie Sancoeur, Dead Nino Lahiffe, Death, Miraculous Holder Alya Césaire, Miraculous Holder Chloé Bourgeois, Miraculous Holder Nino Lahiffe, Peacock Nathalie Sancoeur | Mayura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28876860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EpicNerd/pseuds/EpicNerd
Summary: Adrien arrives just too late to the massacre that signals the end of the war against Hawkmoth. Please pay attention to the tags.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 27





	Seeing Red

_ Citizens across Paris heard an ear-splitting sound, but accepted it as high winds roaring into the city, accompanying the ominous grey clouds that had shrouded the city of lights in darkness. The screech couldn’t have possibly come from a human, right? It’s impossible for a single person to be that loud. No, it wasn’t. For the screaming howl did come from a single person, from a teen boy whom had just officially lost everything. The echoes off the walls of the hidden basement below the Agreste mansion amplified Adrien’s wail as he crumbled to the ground. _

He used to love the color red; it reminded him of the love of his life, Ladybug. But now…now the shade made him retch and dry-heave. When the cool blue of the metal walkway turned red, he found himself hating the color. The overhead lights had been blown out, and the raining glass had already settled by the time Adrien had figured out how to access the secret elevator. He forced himself to walk through, his body convulsing with every step as shards breaking further and blood squelching under his shoes made sounds that would forever haunt his memories. His own blood had drained from his face at the sight before him, but he couldn’t move faster than his slow, staggering pace.

As his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting that managed to live on in the room, more of the heinously jarring scene came into focus, tempting him to run away as fast as he could so that this horrid nightmare couldn’t get to him. But, he knew, this wasn’t a nightmare; this was real. As he crossed over the edge of the walkway, he passed the very real bodies crumbled on the ground that took him a moment to register and process as members of the core superhero team.

As if on some cruel cue, their transformations dropped, revealing Chloé, Nino, and Alya. Adrien’s eyes widened as his knees gave out, dropping him down as red splashed up. He coiled away, a scream stuck in his throat. However, when his head tilted up a little further, his legs spazzed, sending him back as he gagged at the sight of his bodyguard laying in a heap with his empty eyes facing towards Adrien. He found his voice, and he screamed as he desperately tried to wipe away what had already soaked into his clothes.

His frantic scrubbing with his bare hands was cut short by metal clanging nearby. Adrien looked up, unable to fathom a worse reality than what he was already being subjected to. He couldn’t have been more wrong as his eyes locked on the source of the sound that still rang out in the vast, empty room. A few meters in front of him, Hawkmoth’s cane rolled to a stop, coated in red rather than its signature purple. As for the villain himself, his body was strewn over the glass casket of-

“M-m-m-mo-mo-mother?” Adrien stammered, choking on the word.

Hawkmoth’s transformation gave, revealing Gabriel, his eyes somehow greyer than before. As his father’s blood trickled down the coffin, Adrien trembled as he stood up, forcing himself to go further. The floor was wet under his shoes, but he refused to let himself look down; he knew he would lose it if he did. He approached the casket, and he was able to notice yet another body against it. Crouching down, Adrien was able to recognize Nathalie’s face through the bleeding-out gash on her forehead. If the frozen, dormant kwami of the peacock miraculous was any clue, then Adrien knew that he would have seen her as Mayura before her own transformation gave along with her life.

Adrien was numb. Bodies were around him, he was caked in blood that wasn’t his own, and he had discovered that his father and Nathalie had been terrorizing Paris for years as the supervillains he had been fighting alongside-

“Ladybug,” Adrien breathed, whipping his head around.

Despite the red all around him, he couldn’t see his Ladybug. Adrien slammed his body against the railing, and over the edge he saw the sea of red. The cumulative blood from those who he had held dear had dripped into the water, turning it red. At that, he threw up. Gasping for air, he panted as his ears and nose burned with the stinging of his eyes. Blearily, he was able to see through the rods something drift in the water.

“Plagg, claws out!”

Chat Noir ignores the wretched smell that burned his nostrils, instead jumping down and submerging himself in the thick sea. Breaching the water, he gulped down air before diving towards the figure. Scooping it into his arms, he used his baton to get them back up to the platform. Now dripping in red, Chat laid down the body of Ladybug, still transformed.

“You’re still using your kwami! That means you’re still alive! Come on! Wake up, Ladybug! You need to use your lucky charm and fix this!”

Ladybug didn’t move, and Chat frantically began performing CPR, slamming his palms against her chest.

“Wake up! Wake up!”

He plugged her nose and opened her mouth, blowing air into her lungs before beginning compressions once again.

“Come on, Bugaboo! Wake up!”

Then, the worst possible thing happened. The ladybug earrings emitted a single, monotone beep, dropping the transformation and revealing-

“No! No. No. No, no, no, no, no. Marinette!” Chat wept, gritting his teeth as he lifted her upper body into his lap, cradling her as he pressed their foreheads together. Tears dripped down his face, partially watering away the red that he hated. When he looked back, her blue eyes stared back at him, but not really. He knew she wasn’t really seeing him, she wasn’t seeing anything.

Tikki, somehow not dormant, took the earrings and began fluttering away. Chat Noir shot up, running after the kwami. He leaped on top of the railing, using it as a platform to launch off of. He flew through the air, and he almost grabbed Tikki when she phased through the wall with the earrings. Chat plummeted into the red water, thrashing around before breaking through the surface, clawing his way up by digging his nails into the metal.

Back on the landing, he collapsed, his body twitching. Then, he braced his arms against the metal floor, slowly pushing himself up. Staggering to his feet, Chat Noir looked around. Marinette, Nathalie, Gabriel, Gorilla, Chloé, Nino, and Alya were all dead, having fought each other when he hadn’t been there. Why hadn’t he been there? Why couldn’t he have been there? Would his friends and family not be dead at his feet if he had been there?

No earrings, so no lucky charm. No wish that he would be granted when combined with his ring. His ring…

Chat fell forward onto his knees, placing his hand over his heart as he choked and sobbed.

“Cataclysm.”

All of Paris was able to hear his scream, but they chalked it up to just being a nasty wind storm. But, it wasn’t. The echoes off the walls of the hidden basement below the Agreste mansion amplified Adrien’s wail as he crumbled to the ground.


End file.
